Carrot Birthday Cake

My friend Jen's birthday fell over 4th of July weekend and she requested I bring a baked good to her BBQ. So of course I wanted to make her a fabulous birthday cake using my new decorating tips. At first I tried to go the cheap & easy route and looked for a cake recipe with ingredients I already had at home, but then I remembered her all-time favorite: carrot cake. After searching around the 'net for a good recipe, I decided to go all out and grate whole carrots instead of getting pre-shredded (well, I decided this after the boy pointed out our nifty lil' food processor came with a grating attachment), and of course make everything else from scratch. I only mention this because I bought 7 big carrots so I wouldn't run out and ended up only needing 3 (yes, there was 1 whole cup of grated carrot in each one of those bad boys!) so that led to my next post, making 2 dozen carrot muffins.

Annnnyway, on to pictures, decorations, recipe and review:
The top of the cake, in the cake box I got for free from a grocery store (makes it so much easier to transport plus it looks all professional and store-bought)

All lit up with matching candles! This happened by pure luck, as I found them hidden in my cupboard and they happened to match the frosting I'd already made.

I can't locate the cake recipe I used :(. I have a bad habit of using a recipe and then just closing the window without bookmarking it. Now that I'm blogging I'll have to be more diligent about saving recipes and taking pictures. I do remember that the recipe did not use crushed pineapple, which surprised me because I've always used that in carrot cakes. I used a basic cream cheese frosting (with Neufchâtel, which has 1/3 less fat than regular), which was good but a little too sweet. For the pink parts I used good ol' buttercream because that was thicker and easier for piping.